


As Bright and Tall As a Sunflower

by queervulcan



Category: Léon | The Professional (1994)
Genre: F/M, Gore, Murder, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Suicidal Ideation, alternate endings, drastic au, of age Mathilda, smart but faking it Léon, traumatized Léon, traumatized Mathilda
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-27
Updated: 2015-05-27
Packaged: 2018-04-01 13:46:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4022146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queervulcan/pseuds/queervulcan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mathilda's life turns topsy turvy in the blink of an eye.<br/>Léon has decisions to make.</p>
            </blockquote>





	As Bright and Tall As a Sunflower

**Author's Note:**

> There should be an update at least once a week, and more when summer break begins. This fanfiction will be roughly based on the original script.

It was the same shit every day for Mathilda. She would scrub herself pink under a scorching shower, and stand under the steam thinking about nothing and everything.

If an outsider were to walk in, they would see a gangly girl, nearly refugee skinny, who looked as if they were a corpse in more than just their sickly skin.

* * *

Mathilda lived for her baby brother.

At the age of ten, he was getting ready to take New York by a storm, finally starting to fill out his baby skin and become as gangly and pimply as she once had been. If it weren't for him, she would be six feet under some old park, or maybe face down in a ditch.

Her brother is no innocent, mind, that wasn't allowed when you grew up in an abusive household with a neglectful mother and a crack dealing pig of a father. But he hadn't yet formed the cynicism that Mathilda had. Maybe when he was just a few years older, ready to date and form his own opinions.

* * *

Normally, Mathilda had a good radar towards people. She was able to tell who was honestly bad and who was in the gray area. She hasn't met someone who is totally good, yet, but she strives for a childish wish that she will, someday.

So when she meets Léon, she is confused. Everything about this man screams danger, from the bulky build to the way he sneaks about. But whenever Mathilda spoke to him, he never presented signs that he would hurt her or her brother. In fact, he did the opposite, as if he knew how hard it was on Mathilda to talk to complete strangers, and even more to trust them enough to have her brother in front of her instead of behind her.

Whenever Mathilda spoke to Léon, he would always face her dead on, and if he were wearing his trench coat, he would leave his hands out, palms up. Not only did it garner Mathilda's reluctant trust, but it also made him vulnerable.

The few times Mathilda would talk to him with her baby in tow, Léon would look her brother in the eye when he was speaking and nod along, acting as if every word he said was vital. Sometimes, he even unbended enough to smile.

Those moments made Mathilda's stomach ache.

* * *

It was a terribly cold day when Mathilda snapped.

She had been walking with groceries in one arm, her free arm swinging on the other side. She was thinking of taking her baby to the roller rink, when she spotted a police squad outside her complex.

She knew what her father did for a living, so she was automatically on high alert.

When she walked into the hallway and saw the broken glass, she knew better than to interfere. The man watched her like an eagle, so she kept her head down and pretended she didn't see anything out of the ordinary.

Mathilda knew fear. She had grown up with fear as her best friend. She knew what it was it like to be tossed into a corner and forgotten, and only brought out as a punching bag. Although Mathilda knew fear, what she felt now was so far from it that she felt almost detached.

As she passed her baby's home, she heard a man screaming.

"Blood, you killed a damn ten year old!"

Mathilda felt the air leave her lungs, and she squeezed her eyes shut tight.

She shuffled her leaden legs to the door at the end of the hall.

Taking a deep breath, she forced fake cheeriness into her tone, even though her eyes were puffy and her nose was leaking.

"Daddy, I'm home! I have the groceries you wanted."

Mathilda waited, but nothing happened. She frowned, and pretended there was a pout in her voice, even as her limbs shook harder.

"Daddy, come _on_!"

She knocked hard on the door, even ringing the doorbell repeatedly.

Mathilda could feel the agent turning towards her, and her body felt warm and cold at once. Her limbs shook as if they were going through a hurricane, and her skin was clammy.

She knew she may die on Leon's doorstep.

Finally, she seemed to have become resigned, for her face fell and she was reduced to quiet whimpers.

" _Please_. _Please_." she whispered, her eyes screwing up in pain and her lips wobbling with the force of keeping her pleas silent.

* * *

On the other side of the door, Léon was having a crisis. All of Tony's old teaching came back to him; to never get personally involved. It had been years since he had been emotionally involved with another woman, and since then, he had cut off his growth.

Trauma did funny things to young people.

But he also remembered his mother's teaching, to always, _always_ be a gentleman.

He remembered the first time Mathilda had smiled, truly smiled, at a lame joke he told her brother.

He remembered the way she had fought to survive every time she came here and left, with a bit of her being chipped away each time.

Now, she was on his doorstep. And he was conflicted.

But his mother was right. And Tony may have been there since he was nineteen, but his mother had had a worldly sense. He couldn't let an innocent girl die for her father's sins. He couldn't have another Liliana on his hands.

So he opened the door.

* * *

Finally, just as she thought she would become tomorrow's morning news, the door opened and light flooded her senses.

Standing there was Léon, bathed in artificial lighting and looking like an angel with the way the light haloed his body. 

* * *

 

The relief that flooded her body was enough to make her brain stop working, and her knees went weak.

Without a second thought, she scurried in and ran into the kitchen.

Léon closed the door behind her, rolling his eyes in exasperation as he did, and took vigil by the door.

Behind him, he could hear Mathilda puttering in the kitchen, most likely giving him the groceries she had bought for her brother. Not that he minded. With work being so busy, he had forgotten to feed himself more than a quick bite at Tony's.

When Mathilda didn't have anything to busy her hands with anymore, she walked back into the living room and stood behind Léon, toying with the TV remote she idly picked up.

She heard men yelling in the hall about a missing girl, and guessed they must have found her brother's photo album that he hid in his mattress.

" _Shit_." Mathilda muttered, rubbing her forehead.

Well, nothing left to do but protect herself.

Mathilda watched Léon as he cocked and readied his gun, and she couldn't help the smirk that crossed her features.

Why take one bad guy out when she could scare another potentially dangerous man. Two birds with one stone, and all.

She pointed the remote at the TV, and turned it up to full blast.

The look of terror and confusion on his face is one that would stay with her for years, and later on would cause her stomach to twist with guilt.

When Léon double checked that everything was over and they were free to talk, he led Mathilda towards the table in the corner by the elbow and sat her down with a small push on her arm.

"What is your first name, Lando?"

"Mathilda." she said softly, looking him in the eye.

"Mathilda, are you alright?"

"I've seen better days."

"Who will you grieve for?"

Here, Mathilda's face twisted in pure hatred, and her cheeks pinked from her anger.

"They killed my brother. That pig of a father and bitch of a mother wouldn't let me have guardianship of him, and now they got him killed. He was nothing but a bystander," her voice cracked, and her lips started wobbling again, "He was just getting ready to fucking grow up, to fall in love, and now he's _dead_."

The last part was practically wailed, as her emotions overpowered her stoicism. Her eyes were wide and terrified, and the pupils were becoming blown with the adrenaline she had cupped off until now.

"Mathilda." His calm voice stopped her hyperventilating, and she looked at him like he was a lifeline.

"Mathilda, it is not nice to compare pigs to humans, you know."

"What the fuck are you on about?"

"Pigs are usually much nicer than humans."

"Yeah? Well, they smell ten times shittier."

Léon clucked his tongue and pursed his lips as he shook his head. Even in her grieve, Mathilda found it erotic the way his lips formed into a pucker.

"I have a pig with me, in the kitchen. He's very domesticated."

"You don't have a fucking pig, I was just in there." There was a scoff somewhere in there, but Léon chose to ignore it.

"I indeed do. Wait here and don't move."

So Mathilda waited.

When Léon peeked back over his shoulder to make sure she was still sitting, she raised her eyebrows and gestured with her hands in a 'so what?' fashion.

Léon soon entered the kitchen, and had to question his own sanity in helping cheer up a girl half his age.

"Oink, oink! Ah, Mr. Piggy, there you are!"

The pig was actually a kitchen glove, clean and new. As if it had just been bought.

The piggy glove did a half bow towards her saying, "Hi, Mathilda!"

Mathilda couldn't help but smile and play along.

"Hi, Mr. Piggy."

Léon walked out of the kitchen, and stood by her, directing the pig glove like a puppet with one hand, and a glass of milk in the other.

"How are you, Mathilda?" He asked in a high pitched, childish voice.

"I've seen better days." Here, her breath hitched, and Mathilda could feel Léon watching her in concern.

"Here. Take it." Léon handed her the glove, and she looked at it as if it were an oasis in the Sahara.

Léon pushed away the tinge of jealousy at how focused she was on the glove. He sat, and nursed his drink.

"Thank you, Montana."

"Léon."

Mathilda peeked up from her fringe, and tested the word on her tongue.

"Léon. It's a cute name."

Léon choked on his milk, and it took him a minute to stop spluttering. When he looked up, his eyes were wide and runny, and his mouth was hanging open.

Mathilda smirked.

"I... Am going to go get more milk."

"What do you want me to do with this?"

"Keep it for now."

As Léon went into the kitchen, Mathilda's attention was caught by a leather suitcase next to them.

_Why would anyone keep a suitcase here?_

Mathilda had always been a curious girl, and the statement that curiosity killed the cat had nearly applied to her once or twice.

When she was twelve, she had stolen money from her father to buy her own drugs.

At sixteen, she had joined a self defense class full of male students and teachers. She had been the longest lasting there.

And now, she was curious about this suitcase and what it contained.

Making sure Léon was busy in the kitchen, she opened the clasps and pulled it down, only to drop her hands as if burnt.

_What the fuck? Who the fuck is this guy? A cop or a government agent?_

At that moment, Léon chose to walk back in, so he caught the moment as she pulled away from his suitcase.

"It is for work, Mathilda. Do not worry, I will not kill you when your back is turned." There was a teasing somewhere in there, but Mathilda couldn't have been sure with how straight his face had been.

Léon set down the pair of cups, and sat down with a low grunt.

"What exactly do you do for a living?"

"I clean."

Mathilda's eyebrows rose, and she nearly bolted herself.

"You're a hitman, you mean?"

"Yes, Mathilda. One of the best."

Mathilda weighed her options, and considered what had just happened. If a hitman took down a crooked federal agent, they would both be dead by weeks end. But if she left now, she would be dead by tomorrow morning. 

There was also the fact that he could have killed her ten times over by now, or left her to die in the hallway.

Mathilda sighed, and said the first thing to come into mind.

"Cool."

Léon looked up, mouth open unattractively.

The last time he had told someone he was a cleaner, they had been disgusted and couldn't hide it. He still remembered Liliana's face when he had revealed to her what he had been born into.

A week later, Liliana was dead. Nearly a month later, Léon was fleeing Italy through Tony.

* * *

An hour later, Mathilda was still nursing her lukewarm milk, and watching Léon clean his guns out.

In a spur of movement, she grabbed a receipt and a pen she found tucked in a corner of the table, and started writing.

_I, Mathilda Lando, have decided what I want to do with my life. I have decided to be a cleaner._

Mathilda pushed the receipt towards Léon, and told him to read it.

A minute passed, and he was still squinting at her handwriting, the pieces fell into place.

"You can't read."

"I am learning. There has been a lot of work lately."

_Lie_.

He knew enough English to get by in this city. Italian would always be his first language, but he managed just fine with English.

When he was a kid, he wasn't the best at school, because of the stress at home with his father and his coworkers. Because of that, people believed he was slow and unintelligent.

Over the years, he cultivated that image to his advantage, and only one person who was still alive knew how much of an actor he was: Tony.

Some habits were hard to break.

Mathilda took the paper back, and read off what she wrote.

Léon got pissed. If he had had a choice, he would be back at home with Liliana, raising their children in a little village in the mountains.

But instead, here he was in a cold place, with stunted mental growth and a crater in his chest the size of the moon. Passing the days like a ghost, hoping for a bullet in the back of the head so he could escape this place.

"Mathilda, you are a little girl still. Revenge isn't always the way to go. It will eat you alive if you allow it."

"Come on! I'll even work for you. I'll clean, and cook, and do laundry."

"No, Mathilda. Do not ask me for this."

"Please, Léon. I've got no where else to go. You're my best chance now."

"Mathilda, _no_. You have had a long day. You must sleep first."

Hopefully, by tomorrow, she would forget her silly notions. Mathilda slunk off to watch TV, a pout on her face.

* * *

When Mathilda was ready to doze off, she couldn't help but grab Leon's hand and squeeze.

"Thanks, Léon. You've been really great with me."

She let go and pulled the blanket higher over her, and curled herself around the pig mitten.

Within moments, she was heavily asleep.

Léon stood watching her sleep for a few more minutes, before taking refuge to the chair.

* * *

It was about to turn midnight, and Léon still couldn't sleep. His mind was stuck on the girl in his bed, the one that had forced her way into his life.

Frustrated, tired and fed up, he grabbed the gun he usually slept with and walked into his room.

The blanket had worked its way down, and she was sleeping on her side, one arm curled around her stomach and the other curled around the mitten.

Her bob was fanned across her face, and her cheeks were rosy with sleep, her lips parted in quiet snores and soft mumbles.

_Like a child._

That was the first niggling feeling that what Léon was doing went against everything he stood for. He pushed that aside, and aimed the gun for her head.

It was ready to be shot, the silencer on, when Liliana's beautiful face came back to him.

When she smiled at him, when she was angry, when she cried in his arms.

And when she was in her coffin, cold and stiff.

The blood was pounding in his ears, and his heart rate was accelerating. For the first time since he was nineteen, he hands shook.

His father's teachings came back to him.

_No women, no kids_.

Leon gasped and put down the gun, aiming it at the floor rather than at Mathilda. He stepped back, and raised a shaking hand to his eyes.

_Fuck_.

He walked back out, and forgot to shut the door.


End file.
